B & J Market opened in 1978. Then, it was half its size and had only two fuel pumps.

They bought the store when her husband left a job at BP after 20 years when the company relocated its headquarters to Rhode Island.

"It's open 364 days a year, only closes on Christmas," she said.

It was expanded five years after it opened, now outfitted with a full grill where regulars can feast on anything from breakfast sandwiches to cheesesteaks.

It's seen its fair share of wear and tear, too. The painted letters of "self serve" are beginning to run near the gas pumps, which themselves are not the pristine examples you would see at their larger competitors.

But there's no desire to sell the store outside the family.

The elder Brown still tends to the store in a limited capacity, paying bills, handling desk work and helping his son from time to time.

When people began to learn of her husband's health conditions, Brown said the regulars and locals started reaching out to them in protest of them selling the store to someone other than their own family.

"We don't go out to dinner without someone noticing us," she said. "We have people telling us that they don't want us to sell the store."

Robert Brown has slowed down his normal schedule, which saw him regularly leaving the house for long days and, sometimes, even longer nights.

But he's secure about the idea of giving up the reigns.

"It's no problem, I'm just slowly getting out of it," he said.

Jeanette Brown, a retired nurse, said she's just fine with the new task of taking care of her husband.

"I treat him like a king," she said. "I'm basically his caretaker."

They're still a regular fixture at the market, too — just like the story about the armed standoff has remained a fixture.

She added that the incident earned her husband a no-nonsense reputation and they haven't had another robbery at the store since.

That one perpetrator, Jeanette Brown said, was caught police a few days later at the Wicomico-Ocean City Airport "in a dumpster."